As though the world wasn't already made dangerous enough by Islamic terrorism and extremism, N. Korea's nuclear test just made the world even more unstable and dangerous. If the report holds up as true, this is a day we will all live to regret - the day the international community allowed a rogue, unstable, dictatorial communist nutcase have his will over the world, and before we wake tomorow, what has been learned by N. Korea today will likely already be on its way to Iran, or at the very least, set off an arms race in the region and complicate efforts to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program:

The North Korean test may set off an arms race in the region similar to the nuclear proliferation in South Asia, where India detonated two devices in May 1998, followed in the same month by Pakistan's test of a bomb.

The North Korean test will compound efforts to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies say is geared toward building a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is intended only to produce energy.

North Korea's threat as an exporter of weapons technology to terrorists or so-called rogue states would increase with a test, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Oct. 5.

... North Korea is a known proliferator of weapons technologies,'' ... They've announced they have nuclear weapons. People have to be concerned that a proliferating nation might proliferate weapons of that type.''

Other coverage includes Polipundit and Secular Blasphemy .

One last thought. Look to see the Left blame Bush's foriegn policy for North Korea's nuclear test, along with "gee, North Korea was so happy with Clinton's oil before Bush clamped down on them with sanctions." They so easily forget the utter failure of the Carter and Clinton approaches, and that literally every single agreement with N. Korea has been broken. They also forget Clinton's "dream team" of Albright and Berger (they, like the rest of the Left, dreamed that diplomacy and dialogue with despots and idealogues is possible), and that virtually nothing they advised Clinton, worked - period. They also forget that the negotiations by Jimmy "the dhimmi" Carter, the world's worst president in history, went to nowheresville and stayed there:

(Negotiations Lite): Attempting to produce a string of triumphant Rose Garden signing ceremonies, the Clinton administration has blundered into one disastrously flawed peace agreement after another. Charles Hill explains why short-term diplomatic "successes" so often turn into long-term disasters.

... what happens when only one party--the American side, of course--takes such a sensitive approach? The 1990s negotiations of former president Jimmy Carter offer a demonstration. Within the single year of 1994, Carter responded to the "needs" of three of the decade's most odious dictators. Carter's intervention enabled North Korea's Kim Il Sung to start extorting food, fuel, and sanctions relief from the United States in exchange for promises of good behavior regarding his nuclear weapons program. With U.S. forces about to invade Haiti, Carter saved the skin of General Raul Cedras, providing him with a secure retirement. Carter's apparent success in gaining Haiti's agreement to a "permissive environment" for U.S. troops was soon belied as American forces had to engage in a bloody firefight to establish their authority. And in December 1994 it was Carter who first provided legitimacy to indicted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic and his Serb republic when the former president traveled to the previously shunned "capital" of Pale to negotiate a "cease-fire" that lasted only until the snows melted.

Flopping Aces (with additional commentary) points to OneFreeKorea and says it has all the facts, including the fact that N.Korea was gathering the material to build a nuke DURING Clinton's regime, right under his nose, and may have tested one in Pakistan in 1998. Rich Lowry said as much in 2003:

The secret North Korean uranium-enrichment program -- to which they confessed in October 2002 -- had been in operation since 1997 or 1998. If the North Koreans were cheating in 1998 because they already knew that Bush would be elected and invade Iraq, maybe Kim Jong Il really is the bizarre paranormal being he sometimes seems.

Actually, the North Korean cheating wasn't the least bit surprising. The CIA had thought North Korea wouldn't comply with the agreement all along. "Based on North Korea's past behavior," the CIA reported in 1995, "the [intelligence] community agrees it would dismantle its known program, [only] if it had covertly developed another source of fissile material."

The U.S. came to believe in 1997, for instance, that North Korea had built an underground nuclear facility in Kumchang-ri. The administration still dishonestly maintained that all was well with the Agreed Framework. On July 8, 1998, Albright told Congress, the Agreed Framework had "frozen North Korea's dangerous nuclear-weapons program." When intelligence about the suspect site at Kumchang-ri became public in August 1998, Albright told frustrated senators at a hearing that she hadn't known about the information until later in July. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, present at the hearing, had to interrupt her: "Madame Secretary, that is incorrect." She had been told many months earlier.

It was clear by the late 1990s to honest observers that North Korea still had a nuclear-weapons program, while it was spreading missile technology far and wide and battening itself on U.S. support in keeping with the Agreed Framework. In response to congressional outrage, the administration tapped former defense secretary William Perry in late 1998 to review its North Korean policy. He said in March 1999, "What they're doing is moving forward on their nuclear weapons." He added, "We believe this is very serious. The long-range-missile program itself suggests in parallel the development of a nuclear weapons program."

Related:
Jawa Report: NorK Nuke Test Pt. II.

BBC News has it as North Korea in nuclear test claim.

An while we're on the topic of Democratic defense policy disasters, let's take another look at
97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can't Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime